Is there a way to revive this site?

[reploidraz]

No criticism.

I came on today, this site is actually a near weekly visit for me sometimes approaching daily-- years after all of us had stopped seeing any real news out of CAPCOM.

I have to admit I'm really sad. I feel like MM11 and Smash was like the last hurrah before Mega Man became Pac Man.

He's gaming history now...

We all know this.

I forgot we had a forum. This is my first log in on this section in years. I had two messages for proboards change in service notifications. And the forum hasn't had a new topic in three months outside of an off topic post about pokemon trading cards.

Maybe Mega Man Network needs an overhaul? I know there is love here. The articles still pop up and it is clear there is dedication to the franchise. Any way for us to help rebuild?

[Otaku]

I am an odd blend of optimism and pessimism.

I don't think Mega Man is done. I think his days as an over-milked cash cow are gone, however. No more yearly releases for one series, let alone multiple series.

As for the forums, as a whole, internet forums aren't what they once were. The old message board for the site was wrecked by something (I forgot what), and this one was just supposed to be a placeholder. Now, it appears to be permanent, but the existing user base largely moved on, and even those of us still here lost all those old discussions. It really hurt having all three things hit at once (No new Mega Man games, forums on decline, our board vanishing) more or less at once.

As for helping this board, using it would be great. Even if it isn't for a Mega Man based discussion, so long as it is in the correct area. That's why I started that Pokémon TCG thread.

[reploidraz]

That is some good perspective.

I started screwing around with Mesen lately and redrew Mega Man from his 8 bit hayday and thought I might try to update him. The work required is long but it has been pretty fun so far.

Hope the Pokemon stuff is going well dude

[Otaku]

Sounds good.

On the actual Mega Man-related front, if I thought anyone else was interested, I think I might try to get a Mega Man "role-playing resources" thread going. Basically, just a nice, quick and dirty reference source for those who want to play a Mega Man-like character in a pen & paper RPG. Any Mega Man-like character for any RPG someone is willing to stat up.

The catch is I'm actually behind on another RPG-related project. By over a year. >.> So I'm not starting another one until I'm at least able to get the first comfortably back on schedule.

[Nymshi]

Normally I wouldn't reply to a dead topic, but frankly the entire forum is dead.

I doubt this forum is ever going to recover. The old guard have moved on and the new blood seem to be flocking to Reddit. It does puzzle me that the main site continues to be updated in spite of this, as I can't see how it even manages to pay the bills with so little traffic. Maybe I'm missing something obvious?

[Otaku]

Good question, Nymshi.

It is possible that the main site - which is pretty much totally separate from these forums - brings in a lot more traffic. That, or it is just a hobby where the owner is willing to lose a little money.

[Nymshi]

That raises more questions than it answers. For one, if the forums are completely separate from the main site, then who is paying to keep the forums going? Second, the main site has comments enabled for the articles. Why are the forums even necessary? Third, in consideration of one and two, why do these forums exist? And lastly, where does that leave you? As Global Mod, I would have thought you'd have some type of communication with the site administrators?

As I've said before, I could be missing something obvious, but it really does look like you've been left in charge of a sunk ship. So why even return? And for that matter, why maintain these forums? At least, I assume you are. I've seen dead boards before. This one has been remarkably well preserved. And it clearly receives visitors, such as it is. That it isn't wall to wall ads, spam, and virus ridden is a testament that someone's keeping the lights on.

Regardless, the entire reason I popped in was with the hopes that something might be going on. Reddit may be more active, but it lacks the kind of indepth discussion that would occur here on a regular basis. It also helped that there was an industry insider running the show. Or I could be remembering that part wrong, but fairly certain LBD Nytetrayn had contacts and was...likely still is...the source for the majority of the news on the site. Then it just kinda all fizzled up. Not the news...that's clearly still happening. But the discussion has. At least the kind of speculative discussion I'm looking for.

And that ends up wrapping all the way back around to why these forums even exist. Which is depressing.

[Quallevra]

Probably because no one ever bothered to take them down. However, since they're here, we could still use them to discuss stuff. What did you want to discuss?

[Nymshi]

I had wanted to discuss Light and Wily's influence in the progression of events in the future. I had taken it as granted that even if Light did predict or somehow discovered Wily's future designs, that his influence was limited. X himself was a good example of how well free will can adapt, even when given all the advantages to do so. And that Wily's influence was similarly limited, constrained to the virus and Zero.

Recent reading has opened my eyes to the possible extent of the manipulations going on, with X and Zero both being nothing more than players on a stage being danced about on strings by puppet masters long dead and dust. That instead of being preserved knowledge operating on limited AI, Light and Wily both have somehow immortalized themselves into entities very similar to that of Cyberelves. And that things I took as fortuitous side effects of planning gone right may have been intentional decisions made by Light and Wily's AI counterparts. That everything that happened in the X series, Zero series, and ZX series is all a direct result of their meddling.

[Quallevra]

They were definitely still meddling, but probably not to the extent of controlling everything that happened. Light seems to have restricted himself to providing minor help to X along the way-- he certainly wasn't telling him what to do. Wily was clearly a lot more active, since he was actually running around in physical avatars twice, but Zero wasn't doing what he'd wanted, and that wasn't something anyone could have predicted. Heck, Wily spent a lot of his efforts trying in vain to correct that.

In any case, both their direct influence had stopped by the end of the X series. Everything that happened afterward could be considered the direct result of the events they set in motion, but they weren't pulling any strings past that point.

[Nymshi]

But Light did interfere directly once, although the event is questionably canon. He erased X's memories of Zero and prevented him from even learning about him. And while I'm no longer certain of where that would have tied into the future storyline, I think the implication was that without the memory of Zero, X would become hyper obsessed with humans and fill the role that instead got filled by Copy-X. So while it didn't end up playing out that way, Light barely avoided being responsible for that genocide.

As for the other side, what of Weil? Cyberelf research is the direct result of finding a cure for the Maverick Virus. Omega is the original body of Zero designed to interact with the origin virus. Weil was involved in studying both and ended up manipulating both to his own ends. And while exposure to Wily's work is technically second hand, Weil was converted to a body that was at least partially robotic and could interface with technology. At this point, the chance of anything of Wily's directly manipulating him increases. Especially since while Cyberelves were meant to destroy the virus--and in a way did--they also ended up replacing it. Particularly the Dark Elf, which could accomplish the same functions the Maverick Virus did, and then some. I'm not saying Weil was another avatar for Wily, but I am saying there's enough questionable about it to wonder just how direct or indirect Wily's influence on him was.

As for ZX, there are two things. The existence of Biometals enabling the permanent preservation of ancient personalities, and the existence of the Sage Trinity. At this point in history, technology is so advanced that it is well possible the sages are either new bodies uploaded with the data from their namesake or something similar to a Biometal user. If so, this makes the sages either extensions or representations of their respective personality, and would extend a more direct influence of Light and Wily into this time.

[Quallevra]

Light erasing X's memories is the non-canon ending, though he did interfere directly to fix and thus save him in any case. That's the exception, not the rule, of course.
As for what would have happened long-term in the case of that "bad" ending, harder to say. As I figured it, that's a scenario where Zero and the virus remain gone, which also means no more Wily OR Sigma coming back and running around, and nothing to do but rebuild and work towards a better future. Without those threats, X hopefully doesn't need to get obsessed with anything. Indeed, none of the rest of the story would have happened, including whatever post-ZX apocalypse led to humanity becoming extinct by Legends. X3 wasn't kidding when it predicted a choice between Zero's death or the destruction of humanity.
However, all that is just my personal interpretation of the true meaning behind the text at the end of X3.

I never thought of the possibility of Weil being corrupted like that. As a rule, he's the one doing the corrupting. While it's an interesting idea, I don't really see it. After all, Weil didn't end up as a cyborg until right after the Elf Wars. By that time, the original virus was long gone, the replacements had been under his control for years, and anyway what hadn't been destroyed had been confiscated and locked away. In any case, what Weil made of Omega was more a perversion of Wily's original vision than a fulfillment of it, not to mention making it his own instead of giving Wily the credit. Not exactly what Wily's shade would have wanted. It seems more likely that what was left of Wily was destroyed along with the virus proper, before Weil ever began his meddling. What he did was all him.

Regarding the sages, it's another interesting idea, but I don't see real evidence of it. The Sage Trinity don't really act like their namesakes, except for Albert being a bad guy, and that was corruption by Model W (so Weil's doing, not Wily's). Even so, Albert's personality doesn't really match Wily's. Then there's Thomas also going bad, of course.
Their names were explicitly intended as an in-joke rather than a plot point, as I understand it. If that's too much of an in-story coincidence to easily accept, then those three probably picked historically significant names to rule under. (Albert's choice really should have been recognized as a red flag...)